Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The Ringo Wrecking Ball - Some Debates Got Settled In 2012

The story received little attention in the US, but reached the windy windy halls of Whitehall in the UK. What to do with the house whenst Ringo was born?

The debate whether to restore or demolish the home, and the fate of the block on which it sits, went on for several years. In this time it was learned that the brick row block of Madryn St, within number 9 of which the Starkey family lived (that's pronounced Starr in Beatleese), had been bombed by the Nazi's when Ringo (pronounced Richard within his family) was only months old.

Ringo's family lived there only a short time, which lent weight to the argument that since the family didn't want to live in a danky old flat, and got the hell out as soon as they could, the home has little significance - hence get the wrecking ball and some canvas bags, I'm collecting bricks to sell on eBay.

And that seemed to be the direction the debate was going as of late May of last year when the National Trust, the British body responsible for management of historic homes (and there is a large inventory of history on that strange little island) decided the home wasn't worth saving.

But in mid June, the Minister of Housing in the UK, Grant Shapps, stepped in with Liverpool community organizers and announced funds had been gathered to restore the Madyrn St block and other houses in Liverpool to test the market for fully refurbished and upscale re-modelings of such homes, and in the course of this test marketing Ringo's home would be preserved.

For his own part, Ringo Starr himself said nothing during the entire debate, accept to say some unkind things about Liverpool in general, and then write and record a song to make up for it.